People demonstrate in support of the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’ in Rabat, Morocco, 2018.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In the past few months following events in Gaza, I’ve heard voices in the UK, including senior members of the Labour shadow cabinet, supporting the two-state solution while at the same time calling for the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel. As a true supporter of peace based on the principle of two-states-for-two-peoples, the demand that Palestinian refugees “return” to Israel is not only at odds with the very rationale of a two-nation-states solution, but if accepted, would lead to a continuation of the conflict long after the establishment of a Palestinian state. Such a scenario should be rejected by anyone who truly seeks peace in our lifetime.

The shared goal should be to put an end to the conflict once and for all. The solution of two states for two peoples is a just solution because it gives an answer to the legitimate aspiration of both the Jewish people and the Palestinians. It means that each state is the answer for the aspiration of different peoples, each in their different respective state.

Furthermore, the state of Israel was established as a Jewish state on the basis of an international consensus adopted by the 1947 UN resolution. It offered the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs that already existed in this tiny place between the Jordan river and Mediterranean Sea. The state of Israel was established as the nation state of the Jewish people and a democracy granting equal rights to all its citizens. The same day the Arabs who refused the UN concept of two states started a war against the newly born state. The rest is history.

As the state of Israel is, by definition, the answer to the national aspiration of the Jewish people, as Israel absorbed Jewish refugees that came from all over the world, and is the homeland of every Jew wherever he or she lives, the creation of the Palestinian state, by definition, provides the answer for the entire Palestinian people wherever they may be, including Palestinian refugees. This is why, as a matter of principle, the claim of a Palestinian refugee “return” to Israel is so at odds with the very rationale of a two-state solution.

Unfortunately, Palestinian refugees have been used as a political playing card for far too long since 1948. Palestinians are the only group since the end of the second world war to have kept their refugee status and to have passed this status down to over four generations, creating a problem of millions of “refugees” that are kept as pawns in a political game instead of solving their humanitarian situation.

This sinister game continues to be promoted from the Gaza Strip, even though in 2005 Israel made the tough decision to withdraw from Gaza to the 1967 line, to pull out the army, dismantle the settlements and evacuate its own citizens – including those who had lived there from birth.

Today the Gaza Strip is ruled by Hamas, a terrorist organisation that promotes a religious fanaticism that totally rejects the idea of two nation states. For over a decade, Hamas has been unwilling to accept the Quartet principles and gain legitimacy, namely by renouncing violence, recognising Israel and abiding by previous peace agreements.

Attempts to derail the two-nation-states solution by pushing or supporting the idea of a “right of return” will only exacerbate the conflict and is the antithesis of peace. Instead, let’s work together with those on the Palestinian side who support the concept of two nation states, and offer a solution of peace and security that will create a better future for all.

I believe that peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on the concept of two states for two peoples is an Israeli interest as it is a Palestinian one. Today more than ever, we must make the right decisions for the future of our two peoples.

• Tzipi Livni is co-leader of Israel’s centre-left opposition bloc, the Zionist Union. She served as Israel’s foreign minister and chief peace negotiator with the Palestinians